Im a collector of old and discontinued storage devices as well as all things unix. And so far the only devices ive managed to use in IRIX is:

Iomega Jaz DriveDDS 120 Tape drive

These other devices is no go

Exabyte Tapedrive - Termination and ID is set correct but drive fails during boot of IRIX and dont workBernoulli Box 90mb version - IRIX finds it as a floppy but cant access disksSony MO Disk unit RMO-S570 . IRIX finds it and it shows up on dekstop as optical, but states disk is not loaded even if the disk is in the unit.

Is there anything i can do to make these work? Tested on IRIX 6.5.30, 6.5.15 and 6.5.22

Ive also got a SUN H/V Differential SCSI array but no H/V cards yet and H/V cards and cables are not that easy to come by cheap

Don't be so surprised, SGI is so beautiful, but when you have to do something serious like accessing a MO media ... you find that SGI is actually so exciting like a basket of plugs.

I had a similar problem with MO, DVD-RAM and REV, and I got frustrated and very bored about that: IRIX was unable to correctly read/write media, and the Firewire just doesn't work as it should be. IRIX has an interesting filesystem (XFS) which scales on big irons, but ... for me it's as useful as blowing in the wind, at least for my daily needs.

The best I can I suggest you is to plug your MO-driver into a linux box, then you can try to share resources between IRIX and PC through NFS.

weGuru wrote:Sony MO Disk unit RMO-S570 . IRIX finds it and it shows up on dekstop as optical, but states disk is not loaded even if the disk is in the unit.

Sorry, coming late to this as not been readong Nekochan so often recently - but then a few weeks ago I would not have been able to share more recent experience with SCSI removeables.

What format is the disk you are using? The other day I put a Syquest cartridge into the drive fitted in my Fuel, and IRIX was aware of the presence of a disk but would not mount it - I suspect because the disk has a 'PC/BIOS' (DOS) partition table rather than being formatted as a super-capacity floppy. However, it sounds like your MO may be stuck at the prior "is there a disk here?" stage rather than my "there's a disk, but I don't know what to do with it" stage.

With a Firewire drive, I find I have to mount using an explicit path on the command line; IRIX puts an icon on desktop but the system manager cannot mount from there. So it may be worth trying console to mount a MO disk or seeing what fx makes of its '/dev/dsk/dks1d6vol' device (mutatis mutandis for your MO's SCSI ID and the controller ID, of course!).

Don't be so surprised, SGI is so beautiful, but when you have to do something serious like accessing a MO media ... you find that SGI is actually so exciting like a basket of plugs.

I had a similar problem with MO, DVD-RAM and REV, and I got frustrated and very bored about that: IRIX was unable to correctly read/write media, and the Firewire just doesn't work as it should be. IRIX has an interesting filesystem (XFS) which scales on big irons, but ... for me it's as useful as blowing in the wind, at least for my daily needs.

The best I can I suggest you is to plug your MO-driver into a linux box, then you can try to share resources between IRIX and PC through NFS.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but does anyone have a recommendation for a SCSI card for PCs that would be the best for connecting to old SGI drives like the Exabyte 8505 type 8mm tape drives? I have a dual-boot desktop running Linux and I was thinking about putting in an expansion card but there are a lot of choices. I was thinking something like this -

But I'm not in a hurry since I don't even have the Exabyte drive yet. By the way, can anyone point me to an affordable source for those tape drives? I have a few old tapes from back in the day that I'd like to try reading but I'm not sure if it would be easier using an actual SGI droid or a Linux alternative.

As long as there are drivers for the PC platform you're intending on using, it all should work. SCSI is standard, things are supposed to comply to it, so the hardware part shouldn't pose a problem at all, as long as you observe matching connectors and interface type (SE/LVD/HVD), and configure each device properly (IDs and the like).

GRudolf94 wrote:As long as there are drivers for the PC platform you're intending on using, it all should work. SCSI is standard, things are supposed to comply to it, so the hardware part shouldn't pose a problem at all, as long as you observe matching connectors and interface type (SE/LVD/HVD), and configure each device properly (IDs and the like).

Ok. I guess that's what I was asking, does that card have the right connector and interface type for an old SGI Exabyte type tape drive. There's more than one type of SCSI connector, right? Different pin count at least.

ledzep wrote:Ok. I guess that's what I was asking, does that card have the right connector and interface type for an old SGI Exabyte type tape drive. There's more than one type of SCSI connector, right? Different pin count at least.

There are cables between every type of connector, you only have to worry about whether the electrical signals are compatible (High Voltage Differential is not compatible with anything but itself).

Exabyte drives all have 50-pin IDC connectors. The type of connector used depends on whether the connection is internal (to a shielded case) or external. IDC cables are not shielded, so they are for internal connections only. The external enclosure, if one was used, would transition from that to an external connector type like 50-pin Micro Ribbon/"Centronics", or 50-pin HPDB/Amplimite .050. Both were very common, but around 1992 the industry transitioned to the more compact connector type.

You can easily find cables between 50-pin and 68-pin connectors, and the devices will just negotiate whether to use the narrow or wide bus. It's more complicated when you want to chain devices of different widths together: you need to find something called a high-byte terminator.

Adaptec 2940 uses a HPDB-50, later cards like the 2940U2W or 3940UW used the wider HPDB-68, and the 39160 uses the even smaller VHDCI-68.

Internally, the 2940UW/U2W all have an IDC-50 connector. I assume you're gonna mount the Exabyte internally, so all you need is one of those and a matching IDC50 SCSI cable (which usually has a terminator at the end)